The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

"We will be toasting the raw grains," he grunted, using his enhanced strength to push the heavy oar through the thick mixture. "Before adding any water, the raw rice must be dumped into the hot fat. The rice is toasted until the outer edges turn slightly translucent, allowing every single grain to absorb that rich, oniony fat."

He toasted the rice for about twenty minutes.

And then came the hardest, most grueling part of the entire process.

The Risotto Method.

Instead of just lazily dumping massive buckets of water in all at once like the soldiers did for their gruel, Adrian added the water very gradually, ladle by ladle.

And then he dumped in the hundreds of pounds of finely diced potatoes.

"As the toasted rice and the potatoes slowly cook down together in the hot water," Adrian panted, his arms burning from the strain, "the starch from the potatoes will melt right down into the starchy rice water. This creates a highly luxurious, creamy, velvety thick sauce that naturally binds the rice together, without using a single drop of expensive dairy or cheese."

This was the longest phase. On a massive battlefield scale, adding hundreds of liters of water to a massive iron pot meant the temperature constantly plummeted. Waiting for it to come back to a rolling simmer took an incredibly long time over a wood fire.

Of course, he could use magic but he decided not to.

And as the risotto slowly cooked, it got significantly thicker and much, much heavier.

By the end of the cooking process, pushing a heavy wooden oar through hundreds of liters of creamy, starchy risotto felt almost like rowing a small boat through wet cement. Adrian’s enhanced muscles were burning and the only reason he could continue was thanks to his training method. The thick steam rising off the iron vats smelled heavily of sweet, rich onions and roasted animal fat.

Adrian looked at the pot with a satisfied look on his face before his expression faltered.

And finally, the most important step. Or one could say.. the important step that he had forgotten to do before so he had no choice but to do it now.

The Seasoning.

Adrian pulled out four pouches. He tossed in generous handfuls of pure white salt and a hand of freshly cracked black pepper.

"We won’t let the soldiers salt their own food at the end," Adrian told the girls as he stirred the salt in. "Surface salt just makes the top layer taste super salty while the inside of the thick potatoes and the rice remains completely bland. Because I cook the salt directly into the dish now, the flavor penetrates every single grain of rice."

Adrian added a little bit more water so the rice at the bottom didn’t burn and let it cook. Serena and him took care of one pot while Claire took care of the other.

As he did his work, he turned to look at his soldiers who had now finished rolling all of the dough into sheets. He stopped stirring and turned to face them.

He didn’t want to serve just a bowl of soft mush. The old military food was essentially just a slimy, gooey paste and even if he was making something different, if one eats a whole massive bowl of soft risotto, flavour fatigue can quickly set in because everything is the exact same soft texture.

Adrian wanted something crunchy to reset the palate.

"Toss these on that pan right there. Yes, the rectangular one and make some flat bread. Once done, cut those into small triangles and deep fry them in oil. Once you’re done making the flat bread, call out to me and I’ll set everything up for you." he said and once the soldiers nodded, he went back to work.

The soldiers did everything perfectly and once adrian replaced the pan with something that looked like a pig trough that was made of steel, they used it to fry the triangles in it.

In a modern setting, they were basically just fried flour nachos. But here, Adrian didn’t know what the soldiers would end up calling them.

The thin wheat flatbreads quickly turned a beautiful, golden brown. The toasted nutty flavor of the fried wheat paired perfectly with the sweet, savory depth of the creamy risotto. Or at least, he hoped it would.

After all, he had never tried it.

When the four hours of cooking was finally done, Adrian slammed the wooden oar down and wiped his sweating face with a towel.

He picked up one of the nachos and scooped up some of the risotto before putting it in his mouth.

’Alright not bad... not super great either but why am I comparing this to cheese and salsa...’ he thought before he looked at his soldiers, "Serve it up."

The soldiers nervously approached the massive pots, picked them up and took them over to the serving area. The soldiers who had been lazing around looked surprised since the food was ready much earlier than they expected.

They walked over and the soldiers who were in charge of serving scooped up ladles of the risotto and tossed it into their bowls before tossing in a handful of nachos on top.

Adrian watched as the soldiers sat down in the dirt, expecting their usual, depressing sludge.

They looked down at the golden, creamy bowl and the crispy fried bread. To their surprise, it smelled absolutely intoxicating.

The first few veteran soldiers nervously grabbed a triangle, scooped up a massive bite of the thick risotto, and put it in their mouths.

They instantly froze in sheer disbelief.

The intense shock of deep, layered flavor hit them like a punch to the jaw. The harsh onions they were used to were completely gone, transformed into a sweet, jammy, savory base that literally tasted close to a rich meat stew. And the loud crunch of the salty, fried crisp perfectly balanced the velvety, creamy rice.

A massive wave of silence swept across the entire camp.

Thousands of rowdy soldiers completely stopped talking after they took their first bite and just stared at their colleagues with wide eyes.

They didn’t say a single word. They just put their heads down and focused entirely on scraping their wooden bowls completely clean.

Adrian just stood by the cooking tent, leaning against the wooden pole with his arms crossed, watching everyone eat.

A massive morale surge was already happening. The soldiers went from ’eating cheap slop just to survive the night’ to ’eating because it’s genuinely delicious’, and it was currently making Adrian an legend among the soldiers.

But it didn’t take long for Adrian to realise that he had fucked up.

There wasn’t enough food and this was because of two reasons.

Adrian had calculated the amount of food needed by looking at how much the previous meal batch was. But this didn’t consider his own army which was almost the same size of everyone’s army combined.

Apart from him, Draven was the one with the biggest army which was at 4000 men. Others didn’t even come close to him.

Frankenstein had an army of 800 and the Kaldwins had brought in 1200 men but the rest only had 200 to 400 men.

On top of that, he hadn’t considered the fact that when food was tasty, people would ask for seconds.

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